Some want an
isolationist approach in which Washington does next to nothing.
The anti-establishment rage created by the Iraq War only reinforced the populist
isolationist movements that have prospered in the US and across Europe.
To make his case against the "
Isolationist Temptation," Haass creates a caricature, a cartoon, of America First patriots, then thunders that we cannot become "a giant gated community."
Conflicting votes in Iran's parliament show how
isolationist MPs remain active on the issue even if they favoured Rouhani's more internationalist conservatives by voting to remove itself from any supervision of any deal in favour of Iran's Supreme National Security Council that reports to the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Before the United States would enter what would come to be called World War II, a different sort of battle had to be fought on American soil between President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and
isolationists who did not want to get involved with a second European conflict.
Not very convincing arguments, to be sure, outside the circles Keller travels in, and he seems to be aware of this as he hauls out the big guns: The "
isolationists," he howls, are conspiracy theorists--and, of course, antisemites:
Behind the scenes, a highly effective British espionage and propaganda machine helped the interventionists and sometimes conducted dirty tricks against the
isolationists. The America First Committee (founded by pacifist Yale students but eventually dominated by conservative Republicans) became the most significant of the
isolationist organizations.
"I think she's very strong on foreign policy, and I think that if we nominate someone from our
isolationist wing of the party, she'll destroy them," King told ABC News, adding that their pushing of the national debate is "harmful to the country."
"Virtually all
isolationists in the history of the United States have subscribed to some form of international engagement, whether that is economic, cultural, political or intellectual," he said.
Dispelling the myth that "isolationism" had been a key part of the Republican "return to normalcy" in the 1920s, historian William Appleman Williams wrote in 1956: "A closer examination of the so-called
isolationists of the 1920s reveals that many of them were in fact busily engaged in extending American power."
Moreover, the targeting of these "
isolationists" might meet the demands of the new allies who do not hesitate to classify them as being the ones who should be politically-eliminated at the very least.
Druze chieftain and MP Walid Jumblat said Tuesday that "he refuses for the memory of his father, Kamal Jumblat, "to be desecrated by some writings by Lebanese
isolationists." Although Jumblat did not mention why he was saying such remarks, AS SAFIR said Wednesday that he was responding to what Phalange party legislator Nadim Gemayel said Tuesday that "even if Jumblat forgave the assassins of his father and forgot, we do not accept any compromise." Gemayel on Tuesday defended the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) which is tasked with investigating the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minster Rafik al-Hariri (See MER 24/8/2010).
He cites an odd anecdote on Truman, who told Lester Pearson, in January 1948, that the Korean situation was less dangerous than believed by Mackenzie King and that the latter should not pay undue attention to "the fears spread by the British government of Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin, Laborite
isolationists" (136).
Isolationists abandoned the cosmopolitanism of Hamilton, perhaps America's greatest conservative, for a populistic nativism suspicious of worldly grandeur.
